Herbert Rowbarge

by Natalie Babbitt

  Herbert pushed again on the door, to no avail, dread thickening in his stomach. “My name isn’t Schwimmbeck!” he cried. “It’s Rowbarge!”

  “Lookit,” said the voice disgustedly. “I may not be a big shot like you, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. Know somethin’, Schwimmbeck? I don’t like you. Never did.”

  “Get away,” said Herbert. But the heavy body pressed on him, so that he could barely move. The ticket booth seemed to have tipped off the world and gone plummeting into an emptiness where there was nothing but rushing black air and rain, and he knew that without the wall to lean on, he’d have slid to a heap on the floor. This was what it was like. A slipping away of self. A fall into a hole without a bottom. “My name isn’t Schwimmbeck, I tell you,” he said again, uselessly.

  The flashlight flared full in his face, and then switched off. “Yer a liar, Schwimmbeck,” said the voice softly.

  Herbert trembled, something seemed to crack inside his head, releasing a fog of panic. “I’m not Schwimmbeck!” he insisted. “I’m Herbert Rowbarge!” But, with the fog, a terrifying doubt engulfed him. Why, there had been a time, he knew, when he’d had no name, been no one at all. His blood seemed to drain into his ankles and feet, and he feared he would faint. Instead, to his horror, his face, all on its own, crumpled, and tears stung his eyes. “I’m Herbert Rowbarge,” he whispered, but he felt that it was a lie. There was no Herbert Rowbarge. There was only this voice with its judgments—and Schwimmbeck. His breath caught, and the tears rolled down his cheeks.

  The voice said in his ear, still softly, “Gotcher wallet on ya, Schwimmbeck?”

  Herbert made a last violent effort to open the door, driving his buttocks and shoulders hard against it, and at the same moment sensed that the flashlight had been lifted and was coming down fast toward his head. As he thrust backward, he ducked, and they both crashed against the door. It sprang open and Herbert fell out into the rain, fell hard onto the flooded boardwalk, and the body with the voice fell with him, sprawling across his legs. “Charlie!” Herbert yelled, struggling to free himself. “Charlie!”

  The body became a man who drew his breath in sharply and rolled off to one side, scrabbling to hands and knees. “Charlie!” yelled Herbert again, while the man paused spiderlike above him.

  Footsteps pounded toward them down the boardwalk, the beam of a powerful lantern swept over them. The man crouched for another instant and then got up and ran, a flapping mass of arms and clothing. “Shoot him, Charlie! Shoot him!” screamed Herbert. The gun went off with a deafening crack and Herbert, sitting up, ears ringing, was swept with savage pleasure. His lips stretched back tight across his teeth in a crazy grin, and he crowed, “Is he dead? Did you kill him, Charlie?”

  “Not even sure I hit’im,” said the watchman. “You okay, Mr. Rowbarge?”

  “I’m all right!” Herbert cried, faint with relief to hear his name. “I’m all right! He thought I was someone else. And then he tried to hit me with my flashlight!”

  “Well,” said the watchman, swinging the lantern’s beam to the boardwalk ahead, “never mind. Looks like we got’im.”

  “We got’im,” Herbert echoed giddily. “He kept calling me Schwimmbeck. But we got’im.”

  The watchman helped Herbert to his feet and then went forward through the rain and bent to look at the man lying tumbled and still on the boardwalk. “Can’t tell if he’s dead or not,” he reported, coming back. “I gotta go call the police.”

  “All right,” said Herbert. He was still grinning crazily, his voice too loud in the hush. “I’ll turn the lights on.” He went off carefully, stepping wide around the body of the man, to the powerhouse by the work gate. Here, unlocking the door, he reached into the blackness and found, unerringly, the proper lever. He pulled it and at once, like a great eye blinking open, the park awoke with a blaze of ten thousand colored bulbs, dazzling, glorious, throwing back reflections from every pool and puddle, brilliant through the haze of rain like fireworks caught and frozen in a burst of rushing stars. Herbert, in the door of the powerhouse, gazed up, his heart racing, and tried to catch his breath. He felt triumphant, exultant, swollen with self. He was Herbert Rowbarge, risen, and the park was his again.

  Thursday, May 29, 1952

  Babe Rowbarge, in robe and slippers, basks in a broad beam of morning sun that has spilled into Aunt Opal’s living room and made itself warmly at home across the sofa, the polished coffee table, a fortunate section of carpet. It is only eight o’clock, but Aunt Opal has left the house already for a shopping trip to Cleveland with her Wednesday bridge friends—a plan hatched the afternoon before over Babe’s fruit-betty bars and tea. And now Babe has the whole long day entirely to herself. She sips at a cup of coffee luxuriously and opens the Mussel Point Courier, a twice-a-week paper flung at the doorstep in the dawns of every Monday and Thursday by a pimpled presence seen only once a month on collection day. This presence was, a few years past, Carmichael Bray, the minister’s son. Now it is someone less notorious.

  Yawning, Babe wriggles her toes inside the fuzz of her slippers and blinks at the banner headline, HERE WE GO AGAIN, under which is spread, in slightly smaller letters: PLEASURE DOME TO OPEN TOMORROW. The entire front page is a happy collection of items all reporting on the season to come. “NEW RIDE A SURE BET AT THE PARK. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. Mr. Herbert Rowbarge will christen a Tunnel of Love, the latest in a long succession of …” “MEMORIAL DAY VISITORS TO HEAR HIGH SCHOOL BAND. An exciting program of marching music has been …” “BINGO GAMES TO BE EXTENDED. This summer, according to the Recreation Committee, Post 2832 of the VFW will open its doors on Friday evenings in addition to …” “LIFEGUARD OFFERS SWIMMING LESSONS. Tuesday mornings will again be reserved for children between the ages of …”

  “How nice,” thinks Babe. “How nice and normal and … and annual!”

  Precisely at this moment, the telephone rings. The ring is the same as always—a sharp, shrill intrusion. But afterward Babe will claim that she knew at once from the sound of it what had happened—that it sounded, this time, entirely different and made her heart jump right into her mouth.

  She leaps up, letting the Courier slide to the floor, and hurries out to the hall where the telephone stands on a small table just below a mirror. She picks up the receiver and says, “Hello?”

  “Babe,” says a breathless voice, “it’s Louisa. Dr. Herdman’s here—Daddy collapsed.”

  “Collapsed!”

  “Yes. Walter came for breakfast and we were eating and everything was fine, and then Daddy just—blacked out.”

  “Oh, my God,” says Babe.

  “I called Dr. Herdman and he came right away. He and Walter got Daddy upstairs and he’s with him now and—oh, Babe, Walter thought it might be a heart attack, just like Uncle Stuart.”

  “Oh, Louisa, no.”

  “Walter thought—hold on, Babe. Can you hold on? Dr. Herdman’s coming down. I’ll go see what he says.”

  Babe stands rigid, the receiver pressed hard to her ear, and stares at her reflection in the mirror. Hair frowsy, face bare of makeup, the woman in the mirror looks like no one Babe has ever seen before. She strains to make out the distant, low patter of voices, and then jumps as Louisa’s voice comes suddenly loud over the wire. “Babe—are you still there?”

  “Of course I’m still here!” she says sharply. “What did he say?”

  “It’s not a heart attack,” Louisa reports. “Dr. Herdman says it’s just a little stroke.”

  “A little stroke?”

  “That’s what he said. It’s got a complicated name, something about transient—wait a minute. What, Walter? Oh. Yes. Transient ischaemic episodes, Babe. Little strokes. He gave Daddy some medicine and he says he’ll probably be all right as long as he stays in bed.”

  “Oh, my God,” says Babe. “A stroke.”

  “But just a little one,” says Louisa. “He’s not paralyzed or anything, and he won’t have to—hold on a minute, Babe.”

  T
his time the interval is longer. Babe waits, staring at herself in the mirror. She is suddenly deeply self-conscious. No one should be allowed to look at you when you’re getting news like this, she thinks. Abruptly she turns her back on her reflection and stares instead into the living room. The pages of the Courier lie open on the floor and from where she is standing she can see that Ellison’s Drug Store is having a sale. LAST DAY MADNESS! the ad cries happily. COTTON BALLS—100 boxed—29¢. TOILET TISSUE—double roll-23¢. WHILE THEY LAST—Hairbrush and comb set-only …

  “Babe, I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long.” Louisa’s voice seems to roar, and again Babe jumps. “Dr. Herdman just left. He says we have to keep Daddy in bed for a while. He gave him a shot and he has to take a pill once a day.”

  “But, Louisa,” says Babe, “how is he? I mean, will he be all right? Does he feel awful?”

  “That’s the thing,” says Louisa. “He evidently feels perfectly fine, now. Or that’s what he told Dr. Herdman. It’s going to be hell on wheels keeping him in bed. Especially tomorrow! Oh, Babe, I just know he’s going to want to go down to the park for the opening.”

  Babe turns resolutely back to face the mirror. “Louisa,” she says, “I’m coming over. I’ll help you sit on him.”

  “Well, all right,” says Louisa, “but not to stay. He wouldn’t want that. But come on over later and look in on him. Maybe the three of us—I mean, Walter and us—can make him see he’s got to stay quiet.”

  “Yes,” says Babe. “I’ll be there in an hour.” She hangs up the phone and goes to stand in the middle of the living room, pulling her bathrobe closer over her chest. She feels cold, her feet and hands are freezing. The angle of the sunbeam has shortened now, and glares on the surface of the coffee table, revealing small imperfections in the varnish and a faint coating of dust. Babe thinks, “I’d better clean up,” but she continues to stand there. Never in the five years of their separation has she missed Louisa so much, or felt so solitary, so full of the wonder of death. The thought occurs to her that maybe, much sooner than they had supposed, she and Louisa can be together again. Shamed, she pushes the thought away, but it lights the back of her mind and she finds herself saying, in a whisper, “He never gave a damn about us.”

  Her shame deepens, and, in penance, she begins to bustle: collects and folds the scattered sheets of the Courier, carries her cup to the kitchen, returns with a cloth to wipe the dust from the coffee table. By nine o’clock she has cleaned up the breakfast dishes, made the beds, scoured Aunt Opal’s bathroom and her own, and is dressed and ready. It has been a long time since the three of them, she and Louisa and Daddy, were alone together. They will be that way more now, she decides as she leaves the house. Five years is long enough.

  January 1947

  Herbert Rowbarge took off his overcoat and hat and put them away in the closet, and then he sat down on the staircase and yanked at his overshoes. Terrible day for a funeral, he thought to himself as he struggled with the clinging rubber. Well, poor old Stuart, he hadn’t exactly had much to say about it. Funny when a doctor died. You’d think they’d know a way around it.

  He stood up at last, overshoes in hand, and wondered what to do with them. They glistened with rain, and the soles were caked with mud. “No one has ever,” he said aloud, “solved the problem of what to do with overshoes.”

  Babe—or was it Louisa?—came down the hall from the kitchen, carrying a tray laden with tea things. “Did you say something, Daddy?” she asked. Her nose and eyes were red from weeping, and he hated that. He scowled at her.

  “I said,” he repeated, “I never know what to do with overshoes.”

  “Oh, here, Daddy, I’ll take them. They ought to be cleaned off.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Louisa—or was it Babe?—from the living room. “You go ahead and pour the tea, Babe.” Oh. So this was Babe with the tray. Good. He’d been right for once.

  He went into the living room and sat down in his armchair, stretching out his long legs with a groan. It was no good, at his age, standing around in graveyards in this kind of weather. Sixty-seven! He sighed, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. Well, well, old Stuart. Still, he’d had his threescore ten and then some; and a heart attack—well, it wasn’t such a bad way to go. Quick, anyway. Opal was taking it well, and so was Walter. Of course, Walter was almost more his son than Stuart’s; had been ever since he came on at the park. Families! Oh my, families.

  “Here’s your tea, Daddy. Is it strong enough?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at the offered cup. “It’s all right.”

  “I can make it stronger if you want me to.”

  “No, no, it’s all right. Just put it down.”

  “I put the sugar in for you.”

  “All right.”

  “Would you like a cookie?”

  “No.”

  “They’re the kind you like. With raisins.”

  “No! Thank you. No cookie.” Silly word, cookie, for a grown man to have to say.

  Louisa came in, then, with a spotless overshoe dangling from each hand. “How’s this, Daddy? Don’t they look like new?”

  “They are new,” he said. “I just bought them yesterday. They’re only overshoes. Nothing to gush over.”

  “But I only meant—”

  “I know. Yes. Thanks for cleaning them off. I appreciate it.”

  “Shall I put them in the closet?”

  He took a sip of tea and tried to swallow down his rising irritation. “Yes, Babe.”

  “Louisa, Daddy.”

  “All right, yes, Louisa. Put them in the closet.” My God, where else?

  Louisa laid the overshoes on the closet floor and came back into the living room. “Are you ready for more tea, Daddy?” she asked him.

  “No—no, thank you.”

  “You’re not having a cookie.”

  “I don’t want a cookie.”

  “Oh. All right. Are you sure? They’re your favorite kind, with raisins.”

  “I’ve thought it over carefully,” he said, “and my decision is final. I hope you’ll be able to live with it.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” said Louisa.

  “I already offered him one,” said Babe. “He isn’t hungry.”

  “Oh,” said Louisa. She sat down on the sofa next to Babe and for a while they sipped in silence. Herbert looked at them over the rim of his cup. My God. Were any two people ever so exactly alike?

  “You two are forty years old,” he said.

  “Next September, Daddy,” they answered in one voice, then looked at each other and smiled.

  Damn them, he thought resentfully. They were so damned smug. He said, aloud, “It seems to me you’re old enough to stop dressing alike. Don’t you think so?”

  “We’ve always dressed alike,” said Babe. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s fun,” said Louisa.

  “Fun!” he snorted. “Well, I’ll tell you what it is for me. It’s damned confusing, that’s what it is. It makes me nervous.” He set down his cup with a clatter and stood up, glaring at them. My God, he thought, they look like two crows on a fence.

  “Anyway,” said Louisa, “we had to wear black dresses to the funeral, you know, and black dresses all look exactly alike whether they are or not. Do you want some more tea, Daddy?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m going upstairs and lie down.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Babe. “You look a little tired. It’s been a hard day for all of us.”

  But he didn’t feel tired, exactly. Just restless, and cross. Upstairs in his room, he wandered to the window. It was only four-thirty, but already the light was fading, and the stretch of brown lawn below, the birdbath, the pair of concrete benches, looked blurred and crooked through the rain-streaked panes. And then something intruded itself subtly between him and the wet world outside, and he was suddenly aware of his reflection, dim and ghostly, looking in at him, as if it were another Herbert hanging in the air beyond the glass.
He seized the dangling pull of the window shade and jerked it down, shutting out the sight, and crossed to the bed. Here he took off his shoes and socks and sat for a moment, looking down at his feet.

  It was nice that there were two of them instead of one, like Dick. He wiggled his toes and decided that in a way his feet looked like two white doves turned backward, his toes the spreading fans of their tails. Things in twos—that was the ticket. Except for daughters. He wondered guiltily why two daughters made him feel so angry. He could hear them talking downstairs, their voices low and intimate. Damn them. They drove him crazy.

  Then, as he sat there, he felt a funny, silent ping inside his brain, and at once he felt dizzy and confused. “My God, I’m going to faint!” he thought, alarmed. He stood up unsteadily and crossed again to the window as the room rocked around him. Snapping up the shade, lifting the sash, he leaned on the sill and thrust his head out into the rain. The smell of wet leaves, the cold freshness of the air, cleared his vision, and at once he felt better. He drew in his head and shut the window, and again his dim reflection hung there, staring in at him. This time, staring back, he said, aloud, “No, you can’t come in.” And with a short laugh he turned, crossed once more to the bed, lay down, and was soon fast asleep.

  When he woke, an hour had passed and he felt refreshed and happy. What was it he’d been thinking of in that long, delicious moment before he’d dropped off? Something had eased the tension in his stomach, some very good idea. Well, it would come back to him. He climbed out of bed, went once more to the window, and opened it. The rain had stopped, and the clouds, thinning, fanned a broad pink smear low across the sky. Far off around the curve of the lake, above the leafless trees, he could just see the top, the highest point, of the roller coaster black against the sunset. His feeling of happiness deepened, and he smiled. “I’ll go down there tomorrow and see how the merry-go-round is doing,” he thought. It was a new one, new materials developed during the war. The lions were the best he’d ever seen.